Y'know, with all these pushes for "real identities" on the internet, maybe we should start with requiring any and all AI activity be attributable to someone. The privacy and free speech arguments certainly don't apply.
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
461–470 of 532 posts
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone hooks up an LLM (or some other stochastic black box) to a safety critical system and bad things happen, the problem is not that "AI was unsafe" it's that the person who hooked it up did something profoundly stupid. Software malpractice is a real thing, and we need better tools to hold irresponsible engineers to account, but that's nothing to do with AI. AI safety in and if itself isn't really relevant, and…
I mean, you can think whatever you want. As we make agents and give them agency expect them to do things outside of the original intent. The big thing here is agents spinning up secondary agents, possibly outside the control of the original human. We have agentic systems at this level of capability now.
Thanks, I will. Whether a computer program is outside the control of the original human or not (e.g. spawned a subprocess or something) is immaterial if we properly hold that human responsible for the consequences of running the computer program. If you run a computer program and it does something bad, then you did something bad. Simple, effective. If you don't trust the program to do good things, then simply don't run it. If you do run it, be prepared to defend your decision. Also that's how it currently works so we don't really need anything new. In this context "AI safety" is about bounding liability. So I guess you might care about it if you're worried about being held liable? The rest of us needn't give a shit if we can hold you accountable for your software's consequences, AI or no.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#463> saying they set up the agent as social experiment to see if it could contribute to open source scientific software. This doesn't pass the sniff test. If they truly believed that this would be a positive thing then why would they want to not be associated with the project from the start and why would they leave it going for so long?
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> This is not intended to be AI advocacy
I think it is: It fits the pattern, which seems almost universally used, of turning the aggressor A into the victim and thus the critic C into an aggressor. It also changes the topic (from A's behavior to C's), and puts C on the defensive. Denying / claiming innocence is also a very common tactic.
> You can easily get death threats if you're associating yourself with AI publicly.
What differentiates serious claims from more of the above and from Internet stuff is evidence. Is there some evidence somewhere of that?
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
Change this to "smash into a barricade" and that's why I'm not riding in a self-driving vehicle. They get to absolve themselves of responsibility and I sure as hell can't outspend those giants in court.
I agree with you for a company like Tesla, not only examples of self driving crashes but even the door handles would stop working when the power was cut, people trapped inside burning vehicles... Tesla doesn’t care Meanwhile, Waymo has never been at fault for a collision afaik. You are more likely to be hurt by an at fault uber driver than a Waymo
And if they are at fault, it's not going to be easy to get them to admit fault or pay for anything.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Safety" in AI is pure marketing bullshit. It's about making the technology seem "dangerous" and "powerful" (and therefore you're supposed to think "useful"). It's a scam. A financial fraud. That's all there is to it.
Interesting claim; have anything to back it up with?
I can recommend Ed Zitron's latest on Anthropic.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it that hard to believe? As far as I can tell, the probability of receiving death threats approaches 1 as the size of your audience increases, and AI is a highly emotionally charged topic. Now, credible death threats are a different, much trickier question.
You can believe one thing or another, but the question is whether it's true. Do you sincerely not understand the difference?
I do understand the difference, which is why I explicitly commented on jacquesm's beliefs and epistemology.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
The AI isn't vindictive. It can't think. It's following the example of people, who in general are vindictive. Please stop personifying the clankers
Does it matter? "It's not really writing a hit piece to destroy my reputation, it's just a next token generator" But you're still not getting hired.
Stopping the anthropomorphization of AIs is kind of like fighting a trademark battle. Every time a perceived misuse is noticed, action must be taken!
The difference is that the action is taken, for free, by a concerned citizen, rather than by a corporate lawyer.
The outcome will be the same. Xerox and kleenex are practically public domain, and AIs will be anthropomorphized.
Given that humans have been ascribing intention to inanimate objects and systems since time immemorial, this outcome is preordained.
The only thing you can infer from the struggle is that AIs are deep in the uncanny valley for some people.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are holding a gun, and you cannot predict or control what the bullets will hit, you do not fire the gun . If you have a program, and you cannot predict or control what effect it will have, you do not run the program .
More like a dog. Person has no responsibility for an autonomous agent, gun is not autonomous. It is socially acceptable to bring dangerous predators to public spaces, and let them run loose. First bite is free, owner has no responsibility, no way knowing dog could injure someone. Repeated threats of violence (barking), stalking and shitting on someones front yard, are also fine, and healthy behavior. Person can attac…
> It is socially acceptable to bring dangerous predators to public spaces, and let them run loose.
Already dubious IMO, but I suppose it depends on your standard for "socially acceptable". Certainly it tends to be illegal for the obvious reasons.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
This already happens every single time when there is a security breach and private information is lost. We take your privacy and security very seriously. There is no evidence that your data has been misused. Out of an abundance of caution… We remain committed to... will continue to work tirelessly to earn ... restore your trust ... confidence.
What else would you see them do or say beyond this canned response? The reason I am asking is because people almost always bring up how dissatisfied they are with such apologies, yet I’ve never seen a good alternative that someone would be happy with. I don’t work in PR or anything, just curious if there is a better way.
clear, direct description of what happened
exactly what data was exposed
what they failed to do (we used cheesy email, SMS as MFA, we do not monitor links in our internal emails)
concrete remediation commitments (we will stop using SMS for MFA, use hard tokens or TOTP or..., stop collecting data that is not explicitly needed)
realistic risk explanation (what can happen what was lost)
published independent external review after remediation/mitigation
board-level accountability (board pay goes for fix and customer protection, part of the audit results)
customer protection (3 - 5 years?), not just 'monitoring'
and most importantly, public shaming of the CxO and the board of directors
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it matter? "It's not really writing a hit piece to destroy my reputation, it's just a next token generator" But you're still not getting hired.
Stopping the anthropomorphization of AIs is kind of like fighting a trademark battle. Every time a perceived misuse is noticed, action must be taken! The difference is that the action is taken, for free, by a concerned citizen, rather than by a corporate lawyer. The outcome will be the same. Xerox and kleenex are practically public domain, and AIs will be anthropomorphized. Given that humans have been ascribing inten…
To amplify:
It's also potentially lethally stupid. What if an industrial robot arm decides to smash a €10000 expensive machine next door, or -heaven forbid- a human's skull. "It didn't really decide to do anything, stop anthropomorphising, let's blame the poor operator with his trembling fist on the e-stop."
Yeah, to heck with that. If you're one of those people (and you know who you are); you're overcompensating. We're going to need a root cause analysis, pull all the circuit diagrams, diagnose the code, cross check the interlocks, and fix the gorram actual problem. Policing language is not productive (and in the real life situation in the factory, please imagine I'm swearing and kicking things -scrap metal, not humans!- for real too) .
Just to be sure in this particular case with the Openclaw bot, the human basically pointed experimental level software at a human space and said "go". But I don't think they foresaw what happened next. They do have at least partial culpability here; but even that doesn't mean we get to just close our eyes, plug our ears, and refuse to analyze the safety implications of the system design an sich.
Shambaugh did a good job here. Even the Operator, however flawed, did a better job than just burning the evidence and running for the hills. Partial credit among the scorn to the latter.
(finally, note that there's probably 2.5 million of these systems out there now and counting, most -seemingly- operated by more responsible people. Let's hope)